


Game of Gods

by fortheloveofpizza



Category: Homestuck
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-24
Updated: 2012-06-24
Packaged: 2017-11-08 11:16:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/442614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fortheloveofpizza/pseuds/fortheloveofpizza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which everything is at stake as two young gods clash in a battle of power and wit. Also, squiddles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Game of Gods

You close your eyes and breathe in deep, opening your soul to endlessness. Paradox space curls around you, layer upon layer forever and further, suffocatingly vast and breathtakingly close. It bears down heavy on you, puts its fangs to your skin and roars its might straight into your bones to make them quiver, but you are mightier, still, and your heart beats calm and steady as you extend your hands to take eternity firmly by the neck. Your name is Jade Harley, and in moments like these you’re at your godliest.

The presence of your competitors brushes against the tips of your consciousness. You can feel Rose, bright and burning even with a trail of darkness coiling in her wake. John is as weightless as a scent and just as pervasive, and Dave flickers in and out of time – first here, then there, then everywhere at once. You don’t allow yourself to indulge in affection, steeling yourself to focus on the task at hand. If you want to come out of this with your dignity intact and with any chance of a bearable future, you have to be strong and brave and cold.  

You’ll need to be clever, too. Your friends- no, enemies now, you have to remember that! – are no ordinary adversaries. John might not be an obvious threat out here, his wind powers severely limited by the void, but you can never be sure what with that prankster’s gambit. He can be tricky! Dave’s multibodied multitasking has always been impressive, and even though this mission appears ill-suited for his particular skills it would be foolish to underestimate his stubbornness in the face of a challenge. But the one you really have to look out for is Rose. A seer has several automatic advantages, and in this game she’s had the upper hand since before it started.

It’s a simple game, really, but that doesn’t make it any less harrowing. Actually, it makes it harder. That’s sort of like a rule, isn’t it? The simpler the rules the higher the stakes. Take Russian roulette, for example. There are some definite likenesses there to what you’re doing now, and that’s just super stake-y!    

You need to find certain objects, hidden throughout paradox space, which is easy enough for you. The hard part is determining which one will grant you victory. Take the wrong pick, and there will be dire consequences. You shudder to think of it.

The finding itself isn’t that hard. You send out the mental command and with a bit of focus you sense your targets as though they were part of you. In a way, they kind of are. Sometimes it’s hard to tell where Jade Harley stops and the rest of the world begins. With a body without borders you’re as large as space itself – not that this is going to help you here once the finding part is done with. Space powers are awesome and you definitely slam dunked the goal post straight to the homerun gate with that one, as Dave would put it, but you can teleport and size-change and wall-break as much as you like and it still won’t tell you what direction to go in that won’t blow up in your face. It’s a gamble no matter what.  

You hesitate, ready to teleport to any chosen location within a blink of an eye. You have to hurry and make up your mind! Wait too long and you’ll be the loser and you just- Just can’t! Your pulse speeding up, you check on the others. John is static, which is expected and good, and Dave… Dave is hard to localize but you think he might be giving his subtlest efforts at trailing Rose? Now that’s a good plan. Rose isn’t a fortuneteller, she’s pointed that out like a quadrillion times, but those little glimpses she gets of the future hold a lot more information than she’s ready to admit in everyday conversation. She’s bound to have lots of clues on how to win today. Her problem is in getting to the right place once she knows. How does anyone manage without teleportation? You don’t even remember anymore, it must be the most tedious.

But, wait. She is definitely closing in on a target! As soon as the realization hits, you tense every muscle, bracing yourself for the one dizzying second of bonehard concentration required to move from one side of the universe to the other. When you appear in front of Rose it must have startled her, because she jerks her head up, hood falling back, her eyes wide. Your desired goal, the object of your competition, hangs between you. Its plush is a lovely pink, its smile cheerfully ditzy, its tentacles delightfully tangle-prone.

You’ve never been so happy to see a squiddle before.

All you need to do is reach out and grab it, but something holds you back. Rose isn’t moving. That’s weird. Rose loves to win. You glance at her, and find her surprised expression a little too perfect, almost studied. At the bottom of her eyes isn’t confusion or anger or even dejection, only a peculiar kind of hunger. This is fishy to the extreme.

You’re going over your alternatives, thinking fast, when the fabric of time shifts in a palpable quiver and a newly materialized Dave strikes down triumphantly on the poor squiddle.

A moment later he erupts in an empathic “fuckballs!” as the toy explodes, splattering him with… Is that… cake?

While Dave swipes frosting from his brow, you give Rose a long scrutinizing look. It’s great that you didn’t lose, of course! But she’s looking a little too smug for comfort.

“ _Fuckballs_ , Dave?” she says. “Your expletives have been on a creative decline lately. I’m starting to get concerned. Would you like to talk about it?”

“Fuck off.” Dave’s nose is bright red and he pouts in the exact way he’s denied on multiple occasions that he ever does. “Harley, tell your girlfriend to stop being a dick.”

“Tell her yourself,” you say, sticking your tongue out at him. “She’s _your_ sister.”

“To be disowned by brother and inamorata both over the course of twenty seconds, and all for a round of squiddle tag,” Rose says. She’s smirking, hands folded leisurely behind her back.

For some reason you’re a little annoyed. Rose is a terrible winner, and she just _had_ to say inamo-what’s-it instead of good old regular “girlfriend” or “smoochbuddy,” didn’t she? You bet she’s been saving that one for a moment like this. Well, you’re not going to give her the satisfaction of asking what it means! That’s one game you got tired of long ago.

Instead you send out your powers and teletransportalize John to where you’re all doing the floaty thing. He appears with a pop, beaming expectantly.

“Did Dave lose again?” he says, grinning, but one good look at Dave and his face falls. “Ew! No one said there would be cake!”

  


“It was my brother’s idea. I did point out the very real possibility of this literally blowing up in his face, but he was adamant. Hoping, I assume, that this tragic fate would befall another player entirely.” Rose says. “Namely you, John.

“Assume my ass,” Dave grunts.

“ …If you insist?”

“Yeah.” Dave wipes his glasses gingerly, without taking them off. It doesn’t do much but smear the light pink cream filling more evenly over the lenses. “This is me urging you to give it a long hard think while I’m gonna go smack a Dave for ever listening to schemy bullshitters going ‘sup ecto-bro, wanna break John’s winning streak with a cakex5 combo, no I’m not gonna double cross you and enjoy your creamy humiliation while I’m sliming my leggings thinking of how to include this in my next beards&jizz epic, that would be fucking unconscionable of me.’” 

“Dude, _serves_ you right!” John says, and then yelps when Dave lunges forward in attempt to smear his sweet-sticky hand on John’s hood.

You ignore them. You’re not in the mood for silly antics. Which is weird! The Who-Has-To-Wash-The-Dishes-Next-Week battles usually make you anticsy like nothing else. It’s a great tradition, especially since you never lose. When the four of you first started living together you didn’t think dishes was something you would bother with – you never did on the island, after all – but Rose wanted fancy china and John turned out to have really strict ideas on proper housekeeping ingrained since early childhood and team Why-Can’t-We-Just-Get-Take-Out-Forever Harley-Strider didn’t stand a chance. You take turns setting the game up. Squiddle tag is a classic. You pick your favorite squiddles, scatter them blindly throughout paradox space using your space powers, and it’s all funtimes from there.

“Want to keep playing?” you ask her. “We still haven’t found the un-rigged one.”

“Oh.” Rose tilts her head. “Are you sure about that?”

She takes her hands from behind her back. A blue squiddle bobs merrily between them. You narrow your eyes.

“How did you get that?”

Rose shrugs. “By winning.”

“No, I am serious! How?”

It irks you that you didn’t notice. Not that you can keep track of everything everywhere constantly, it takes a fair amount of active attention, but still.

“Did I ever mention that magic is real?” Rose says, altogether too pleased. You frown.

“That’s not how squiddle tag works. God powers _only_.”

“I’m a god, this is my power. Ergo: god power. It’s within the rules.”

“Not unless you bend the rules all the way around.” Rose rolls her eyes, and you add: “You cheated.”

It’s Rose’s turn to frown.

“I did not.”

“Yes you did!”

“If it’s that important to you, here.”

She tosses you the squiddle. It slides towards you through the vacuum, but you bat it away before it can bump into your shoulder, sending it on a course towards John instead.

“That’s not the point!”

The point is that you’re getting tired of losing. Rose always, always wins, and not often fairly. Playing cards is impossible because she’s seen your hand long before you’ve dealt the cards. She knows your next chess move. Same with checkers. Battleship isn’t to think of.  

Even scrabble is a no-go. It doesn’t matter that _sl’othyrglu_ means “pie crust” in broodfester tongue, if LMAO isn’t valid then neither is that! Also since when does a letter E tile give 10 points? The numbers keep changing mysteriously.

The truth of it is: Rose is a cheater. She is a huge, stinky cheater with no game morals and playing with her is never fun anymore and you’re sick of it. You haven’t realized how much it upsets you until now, when you say this to her face, spitting it out too fast and too hotly.

Rose doesn’t take it well.

“I seem to recall another game where my disregard for the rules didn’t invoke this much complaint.”

You’re aware of how terrible an idea your reply is before the words leave your tongue. You still say it, drawing yourself up, leaning in.

  


“Yeah, because all those schemes of yours worked out _sooooo_ well and according to plan!”

It’s as if space itself hardens along with the line of Rose’s jaw. It isn’t hard the way it is when she’s being kismesisterly with Terezi or negotiating the handing over of some important book from cantown or when she’s dropped a stitch. She’s hard like the points of her needles, hard like a frozen childhood buried in ice.

“My apologies, Jade,” she says, enunciating your name with care, “I’ll try to follow through and die more thoroughly next time,” and it _hurts_.

It hurts like hearing Dave tell you about the tumor, like knowing she was prepared to die alone, for you. It hurts like those awful, blood drenched dreams you have that leave you sweaty and panting, fumbling for her hand in the bedroom darkness to make sure she’s still there. It hurts like when she has her own dreams and won’t come to you for comfort, disappearing in silence for hours and days.

It hurts so much, and all your pain turns into rage.

It’s good to be angry sometimes. Being angry has helped you a lot in the past! It helps you stay on track and keep people from stepping on you. But you can get angry in the wrong way, too. When you feel guilty and helpless and sad and your brain gets all frazzled. You still regret how you acted towards Jadesprite. That was textbook bad anger, and so it this, you know that it’s bad even as you fold your ears back, but the wave of tension rising from your legs to settle between your shoulders is impossible to ward off. Every hair on your body stands on end and your head is pulsing, feeling twice its size. Rose had turned to leave. You’ve started growling, you don’t know when, every adrenaline filled muscle in your body is telling you to pounce.

She doesn’t see you coming.

You slam into her with full force, sending you spinning several meters. Rose shouts wordlessly going down, shocked and furious, already fighting back. She’s twisted around to face you before you’ve managed to get a good hold of her arms, but you manage to get one leg around her waist and the other between her thighs, locking her hips in place. It isn’t that Rose is a bad fighter. Quite the opposite – at times she scares even you. Only at long range, though. Like this, fist to fist, there isn’t much she can do against your taller height and broader shoulders. It doesn’t take long before you have her pinned.

  


Someone’s saying something – you register the sound but not the words – and you bark at them, too caught up in the fight to bother people-talking.  You hold Rose’s wrists firmly, settling all your weight on top of her, straddling her waist. You’re not sure where you’re going with this. You don’t want to hurt her! But you don’t want to let go, either. You want the anger to burn out, use it all up the way you did before you learned to speak and only argued simple things in simple ways, your hands against Bec’s snout. Maybe what you want most of all is to cry a little, wear yourself slack-limbed and pour your tears into her soft hair like you used to pour them into Bec’s fur.

You don’t get a chance to act on that impulse. You pause, only briefly, and Rose seizes the opportunity to dart her head up and kiss you, right on the lips.

The growling dies in your throat with a whine. Rose’s headband has been knocked askew, so you release your hold on her to set it right again.

“That was definitely cheating.”

“I suppose I can’t deny that.” Rose looks around. “Did John and Dave leave while we were fighting?”

“I think so.”

“How irresponsible,” she sighs, without much conviction. You both know it’s generally not a good idea to get between you two. This one time John got his glasses broken and everyone felt terrible.

You don’t really know what to do next. The rage has washed off you, swept away by a kiss. Now you just feel sort of dull. You lay your head down on her shoulder, the tip of your nose only millimeters from her neck. She smells nice. When she tentatively puts her arms around you, you let her do it, adjusting your position to make yourself more comfortable.

“I might be the worst girlfriend,” you mumble. Rose shakes her head.

“Then what does that make me?”

“Hmm. Contestant for the title?”

That makes her chuckle. It’s good to hear it. You prop yourself up on your elbows so you can see her properly.

“I’m sorry I said that thing earlier.”

“I am as well,” Rose says. “It was uncalled for, and I apologize.”

You hug her close. “And I’m sorry I jumped on you.”

“A little warning next time will be appreciated.”

You peck her on the cheek in response, and now you guess you’re fine? For a while? It’s hard having a girlfriend and growing up. It’s hard, and you’re 100% absolutely dead sure that _nobody_ understands.

Except for Rose, maybe.

“I love you,” you say. “You butt.”

“This butt is quite fond of you, too.”

“Good.”

You give her actual butt a squeeze for good measure. It makes her jump, then smile, for real this time, not another smirk. When Rose smiles like that it makes your heart do all kinds of happy dances.

Minutes pass with you in her arms and her smell in your nose, until she clears her throat and says:

“At least we’ve been able to settle that in a showdown of sloppy makeouts, I can be certain to emerge victorious.”

That’s the most offensive thing you’ve ever heard and you tell her as much.

“Just no way! I could out-slop you any time!”

“A bold assertion.” She winks. “Prove it.”

Her arms around you tighten, her chest pressing against yours.

You wet your lips.

  



End file.
